Avi Korine

Harmony Korine
Korine at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	(1973-01-04) January 4, 1973 (age 44) Bolinas, California, U.S.
Occupation	Director, screenwriter
Spouse(s)	Rachel Korine

Harmony Korine (born January 4, 1973) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is best known for writing Kids and for writing and directing Spring Breakers, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. His film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at CPH:DOX in November 2009. His most recent film, Spring Breakers, was released in 2013.

Korine was born in Bolinas, California and raised in Nashville, Tennessee into a Jewish family. His parents are Eve and Sol Korine. His father was a tapdancer and produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colorful Southern characters"; he would take Korine to carnivals and circuses and taught him how to use a Bolex camera. As a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films and took him to see Even Dwarfs Started Small in the theater. Korine reminisces, "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so powerful." As a child, Korine changed his name from "Harmony" and went by "Harmful," as he thought it made him sound tougher when he got in fights. Korine spent his childhood in Nashville, attending Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. Korine also spent some time living with his parents in a commune, which helped to inspire the commune setting of Mister Lonely. As a teenager, Korine frequented revival theaters, watching classic films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine briefly mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.